Achipur & India’s First Chinese Settler

While Chinese travelers and chroniclers, like Hieun Tsang and Fa Hien, have made their way into India, through millennia, the first Chinese settler in Bengal was a man the British called Tong Atchew, in the late 18th century. Also referred to varyingly as Yang Dazhao, Yang Daijang and Yang Tai Chow, little is known about the early life of Atchew, except for the fact that he was probably a tea trader. 

Atchew  died in 1783, and we find a letter from an East India Company attorney, attempting to extract money from the executor of Atchew’s estate. Details of what the estate must have been like come from the notice of sale in the Calcutta Gazette of 15th November 1804. The notice mentions that the estate, along with ‘all the buildings, stills, sugar mills and other fixtures’ were for sale. With an estate so large, Atchew was probably cultivating the sugarcane he needed to produce sugar. The mention of stills also indicates that he was brewing alcohol from the sugarcane. 

Today, Achipur is just like any other nondescript village in Bengal. Of Atchew’s sugar mill, absolutely nothing survives. However, Atchew’s horse-shoe shaped tomb, painted bright red, still remains, on the banks of the Hooghly river. Also surviving is a Chinese temple, dedicated to the deities Khuda-Khudi, the God and Goddess of Earth. The temple itself is a low-roofed structure, painted bright red and covered in excellent Chinese calligraphy. The present structure of the temple is likely to be more modern, but the idols inside were likely brought over from China by Atchew himself. Curiously, behind the main Chinese temple is a smaller Hindu shrine, which some texts mention as being dedicated to Dakshin Ray, the Tiger God worshipped by Hindus in and around the Sunderbans.

All year Achipur remains a quiet, sleepy village, transforming into a fairground in the weeks following the Chinese New Year. This is when thousands of Chinese descend on the village, to pay their respects to Tai Pak Kung, as Atchew is known to the Chinese community, which roughly translates to the ‘biggest grandfather’ or ‘godfather’.